In Africa 11 million children have lost at least one parent to AIDS and that number is likely to rise to 20 million by the end of the decade a report by the U.N. Children’s Fund predicts. A baby born to an HIV infected mother has only a 30% chance of being infected. This means at lest 70 percent of children born to infected mothers will be free of the virus. Unfortunately, these children have a close to 100% chance of being orphaned. Most will see their mothers and fathers die before they reach their 5th birthday. To these children must be added their siblings, born before the mother became infected.

Children in HIV affected households begin to suffer even before a parent dies. Not only do they go through the trauma of witnessing their parents’ illness and death, but they are likely to be poorer and less healthy than other children. The implications for generations of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa are extraordinarily grave. Children are forced to drop out of school because they can’t afford the fee, have to care for a sick parent or need to earn money. Parentless children, where no intervention is offered, are prime candidates to fall prey to organized crime and become thieves or prostitutes.

Feeding Projects
The AIDS pandemic in South Africa has left many children orphaned. Helping Hands is active in caring for the destitute and orphaned children. Through this project a minimum of 1000 children daily receive a healthy meal. This helps to build strong immune systems thereby helping to prevent sickness and enhances their ability to stay alert and focused in their schooling, thus providing for their long-term good.

Foster Care
Our field workers identify the orphaned children in each village we work in, with a view to finding foster care for each child. Foster care is ideally sought in the child's community. Once foster care has been established, we assist the foster family in obtaining child and foster care grants from the government through our working relationships with the Department of Social Services. Children for whom a foster family in the immediate community cannot be readily found are housed in the Helping Hands Safe House. At this house they are cared for until a foster family can be found.

Safe House
The Safe House is located in the villages where the children live thus the child is not removed from the village but rather is cared for by the village, in the village. This is not a permanent home but an interim place where children can be safe and receive loving care during this most difficult part of their lives. It is a part of African culture to open your home to the extended family which is why keeping children in their own villages is vital to preserving this positive aspect of African culture.

Orphan Intervention Center
At our Orphan Intervention Center, children receive grief and trauma counseling. Children are experiencing death all around them as their parents and other adults are dying of AIDS. Many children are displaying characteristic signs of emotional trauma which in large part is remaining untreated. In order to restore hope in the lives or these children it is vital to help them cope and develop into emotionally sound and spiritually whole adults. The Orphan Intervention Center supports the children through a 10 day specially designed program to reach a child through various forms of therapy. The program is supervised and monitored through assessment tools created by a Christian doctor of psychology.

Mission statement
Helping Hands is dedicated to restoring hope for the future in disadvantaged communities by providing opportunities for individuals in the community to develop skills that will equip them to take responsibility for their own economic, health, educational, social and spiritual upliftment.